I hope that offer is still open
I know he is up to the job but must encourage him to do less.

Or rather more of less.

These are my suggestions:

* A six week to release cycle (this creates energy and impetus - 3.02 has been in development for over a year)
* Release often
* Concentrate on co-ordinating and incorporating bug fixes and prioritizing on a very small number of improvements
(if you aim for less - you will do more as developers offer updates, new programs if available)
* Only engage with positive contributers - developers such as Tronkel, Sigmund, Dougal, MU, Muggins, HairyWill etc are your most precious resource
* After 6 weeks, another community member (if available) can co-ordinate 4.3

By the way in my capacity as 'official crustacean'
I am giving 4.2 the codename 'Deep Thought' - anyone know why?

1. Where could we trim the bloat.
- Barry mention a long time ago that Gparted is big. If we could save 700 kb with a Pparted gui, that would matter.
- ...
2. What type of programs do we miss.
- We still haven't any peer2peer file sharing. Maybe it is possible to make a small alternative to Limewire and Amule.
- FFmpeg can record desktop, so a video screenshot recorder should be doable.
- A simple DVD-ripper should be doable.
- ...
3. Some Puppy scripts needs an overhault.
- Pschedule doesn't handle advanced crontabs.
- Pctorrent could get a cleaner gui.
- ...
4. What core features do we dream about.
- Define which partition to mount at boot.
- Packages with nvidia/ati drivers.
- Enhanced menu. (like the one MU made for Muppy)
- Blu-tooth.
- ...
5. Simplifying Puppys interface.
- Control panel.
- Why do we still need the CD/DVD wizard?.
- ...
6. Unmantained code ask for improvement or fork.
- Jwm seems to have stalled. It works ok, but there are small issues.
- Puppy would benefit of a Gtkdialog maintainer.
......Bugs:
......- Multiple selection in <list> does not work.
......- Using windowmanager to close gtkdialog app with menubar leaves pid alive.
......- Click column header in <table> should have sorted content of colunm.
......Enhancements that would be very good for Puppy:
......- Multiple selection in <tree> widget.
......- dynamic <pixmap> widget. Today it is static which means we can't change image without restart complete gui.
- ...
7. What apps are we not pleased with.
- Fotoxx can't start slideshow from commandline.
- Gxine using fullscreen does sometimes give trouble.
- ...
8. Artwork. Puppy still got more potential in the artistic section.
- Complete themes with matching jwm/gtk/icons/wallpapers.
- ...
9. Documentation
- ...
10. Translation
- ...
11. Others
- ...

It would be great if ttuuxxx could maintain a list of targets for 4.2, 4.3 ... Who is working on what, links to futher info, ... Like this it is easier for the rest of us to grab a certain project. The projects are many and very different. I just listed what drops into my mind. If the list is maintained and easy available, it would be easy to see;
- what should have been done.
- how can everybody contribute to Puppy.
- Puppys goal.

One person, Ttuuxxx, has offered to work on co-ordinating 4.2 and beyond.

If Barry is happy with it, I would be more than happy and excited to co-ordinating 4.2 and future release
That would be a great honor and dream come true for sure 100% no doubt about it.
The idea of having a open/clean palette to work with developers is exciting.
To the future of puppy, Cheers.
ttuuxxx_________________http://audio.online-convert.com/ <-- excellent site
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/A-codecs/ <-- Codec Test Files
http://html5games.com/ <-- excellent HTML5 games

As Barry and the developers starts to move towards 4.1 Final
and UniPup

We can start thinking about Puppy 4.2

These are my suggestions:

* A six week to release cycle (this creates energy and impetus - 3.02 has been in development for over a year)
* Concentrate on co-ordinating and incorporating bug fixes and prioritizing on a very small number of improvements
(if you aim for less - you will do more)
* Only engage with positive contributers - developers such as Tronkel, Sigmund, Dougal, MU, Muggins etc are your most precious resource
* After 6 weeks, someone else (if available) can work on 4.3

By the way in my capacity as 'official crustacean'
I am giving 4.2 the codename 'Deep Thought' - anyone know why?

The six week release cycle is a bit strict. It might take a few weeks just to get everybody organized and working on something.
Lets not forget this is the first initial release after Barry and it will take some time to get things moving along.
Plus now its not up to 1 individual to make decisions, It will have to be a developer group effort, so questions will have to sent out, and returned and then added up and then email results back to the developers so they know where we are heading.
Its a bit of redtape that will slow things down but it will keep us all unified and that is what matters most. I would say the first release will have a lot of improvements, changes. But maybe 12 weeks for the first cycle would be more closer but who knows right now we are in unchartered waters. I guess we'll find out after the first release. It could very much be just 6 weeks but I don't want that written in stone:)

You mentioned "Only engage with positive contributers" I have never had any word with the developers you've mentioned, Also the only thing I have for them is a deep sense of respect. So nothing to worry about at all.

I'm just wondering if the next one should be 4.2 or 5.0
I would like to see puppy compatible with a big brother distro. I think that should be the first question for developers.

The wiki page for Deep thought (4.2) should be on the Community Website.

I will leave someone to start that AND someone (yes that means anyone is part of the community) please ask Rastapix for graphics . . .
or the guy (sorry can not find name) from Okinawa
who did some icons for psip - he has a Puppy as a signature and a weird avatar name with numbers in it . . .

We should of course work on 4.1 for now
I was very impressed with Sigmunds list of potential improvements
(we don't have to do all of them at once - just as they become available)

I am glad you are still up for it Ttuuxxx
It should be 4.2
(the reason 6 weeks seems daunting is because you are thinking already in terms of fixing 'everything' and 'organizing')

Think in terms of prioritizing only 3 or 4 things and getting those done
Organisation will occur as needed
(your plans will be a waste of effort - this happens time and again in Puppy)

This is why I say, think about doing less
In 3 months things can get complicated - six weeks is hectic but manageable

Although with Puppy I am not involved with development, I have been involved in software development for many years. I beleive that Ttuuxxx is right, 6 weeks is tight. Set a longer time as a guide and if it happens sooner, then you have a small break before you need to 'hit the books' once more.

As for a 'Big Brother Distro', there are too many good packages in all the major distros to limit Puppy to one. We have some good translation pacages out there to work from: undeb/unrpm and others.

'Names' for a release do not always help. The same with a new theam for each release. Making a good solid working release that keeps the current users and helpes find new ones is what I would like to see.

Although with Puppy I am not involved with development, I have been involved in software development for many years. I beleive that Ttuuxxx is right, 6 weeks is tight. Set a longer time as a guide and if it happens sooner, then you have a small break before you need to 'hit the books' once more.

As for a 'Big Brother Distro', there are too many good packages in all the major distros to limit Puppy to one. We have some good translation pacages out there to work from: undeb/unrpm and others.

'Names' for a release do not always help. The same with a new theam for each release. Making a good solid working release that keeps the current users and helpes find new ones is what I would like to see.

Well Nathan I agree with you 100%, I would like to keep coordinating future versions. I do find it a bit odd to get everything working/up and running and then just say see ya, better luck to next guy trying to work it out, and then they have to start all over again. Like make contact with the developers etc, find how things are done, who does what, who wants to do what, whats left to fix from the last release etc. I bet the developers will say after the 4th or 5th person, ohhh nooo, not another "Hi my name is so and so,I'm the new coordinator what do you do for puppy?"
I personally think changing hands all the time would just waste a lot of time and repeat a lot of task and stop the streamline of future releases.

very new here i know, and not of any calibere (sp?) to be helping with the production of future puppy's, but i was just reading through this thread out of curiosity - "deep thought" is an awesome name - inspired by h2g2 by anychance? the computer built to solve the answer to the mean of life, the universe and well just about everthing? lol, brilliant name!

um something i was wondering, i dont know how easy or feasable it would be, but as someone new to puppy linux i would like to see a some sort of auto-updating functionallity so that i can update to the newest realease of puppy and not have to reconfigure everyhing all over again (such as menus, boot grubs, applications, themes, etc)

and i saw you mention something earlier about stripping all the bloat - this i recon is an excellent idea (i think it currently includes something like 3 calculators and 5 or so media players... surely choosing one universally good one and allowing the addition of more if necessary would be a better way forward)

anyway i have been really impressed with what barry and others have managed with puppy so far and hope you guys manage to continue the brilliant work _________________"My Universe is what happens to my eyes and ears. Anything else is surmise and hearsay. For all I know, these people may not exist. You may not exist. I say what it occurs to me to say."

1. Where could we trim the bloat.
- Barry mention a long time ago that Gparted is big. If we could save 700 kb with a Pparted gui, that would matter.
- ...
Maybe use Qtparted? Its a nice front end to libparted, maybe that could be a new front end? The debian release I stripped down to 173kb once the locales and docs were removed, I did this to the debian package just to see quickly how small of a package it could be, for this reporting back here purpose. but keep in mind thats just the front end, it still needs libraries to runhttp://qtparted.sourceforge.net/screenshots.en.html

- A simple DVD-ripper should be doable.
- ...
3. Some Puppy scripts needs an overhault.
- Pschedule doesn't handle advanced crontabs.
- Pctorrent could get a cleaner gui.
- ...
4. What core features do we dream about.
- Define which partition to mount at boot.
- Packages with nvidia/ati drivers.
- Enhanced menu. (like the one MU made for Muppy)
- Blu-tooth.
- ...
5. Simplifying Puppys interface.
- Control panel. This is high on my list

- Why do we still need the CD/DVD wizard?. I'll ask the developers
- ...
6. Unmantained code ask for improvement or fork.
- Jwm seems to have stalled. It works ok, but there are small issues.
- Puppy would benefit of a Gtkdialog maintainer.
......Bugs:
......- Multiple selection in <list> does not work.
......- Using windowmanager to close gtkdialog app with menubar leaves pid alive.
......- Click column header in <table> should have sorted content of colunm.
......Enhancements that would be very good for Puppy:
......- Multiple selection in <tree> widget.
......- dynamic <pixmap> widget. Today it is static which means we can't change image without restart complete gui.
- ...
7. What apps are we not pleased with.
- Fotoxx can't start slideshow from commandline.
- Gxine using fullscreen does sometimes give trouble.
Well a couple of moths back I compiled up a VLC 8 series release It was a 10MB but took way less resources than the default Xine player in puppy, I compiled everything as I386. Maybe have a read from the users reports on the resources used compared to Xine.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=31890
The reason it was 10MB is 5MB was just wxgtk files and the 5mb was vlc. Probably a more skilled developer could bring that down a lot, I tried to compile 9.1 this week for about 4 days and it was very problematic, first you have to edit the source file vlc.h located in the bin directory and remove the section that stops vlc from running in root, thats a new feature for Version 9. And then I couldn't get the latest version of ffmpeg to compile properly. Without that vlc would run properly, I could play xvid/divx but couldn't get it to play dvd's without pausing.
Also I read in the past you can compile VLC to use xine-libs, Now wouldn't that be great if we could drop Gxine frontend and replace it with VLC frontend, Then we could say goodbye to the fullscreen problems for ever. Plus the new 9 series front end looks very nice and has a lot of skins for it.

- ...
8. Artwork. Puppy still got more potential in the artistic section.Have you looked at 3.0.2 The icewm theme I built myself, The 86 25x25 new icons were from Tango,gnome,KDE and a few made by myself. It gave the package a complete look.
- Complete themes with matching jwm/gtk/icons/wallpapers.
- ...
9. Documentation- darrelljon is working on it
- ...
10. Translation
- ...
11. Others
- ...

It would be great if ttuuxxx could maintain a list of targets for 4.2, 4.3 ... Who is working on what, links to futher info, ... Like this it is easier for the rest of us to grab a certain project. The projects are many and very different. I just listed what drops into my mind. If the list is maintained and easy available, it would be easy to see;
- what should have been done.
- how can everybody contribute to Puppy.
- Puppys goal.
Already Started Thinking about it
Sigmund

They both use a n older version of libparted, unfortunately, but I have that too.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/amigolinux/download/Utils/parted-1.4.24/

I somehow doubt you are interested in the ncurses (like dialog) frontend, although you could run it even without X.
The gtkparted program works, but could use a couple of features still. Someone might even upgrade ot to use GTK2 if you are planning a distro without gtk1.

Either one of the frontends could be pretty easily update to current versions of parted.
The bad thing about gparted is that it needs all the gtkmm stuff which is probably not used by any other programs you are using. If you are installing QT anyway, the qtparted would be a better bet.
Still, I would love it if someone put a little effort in these two oldies that I drug up. I simply don't have enough time to work on them, though I did some bit of work on each a couple of years ago.

Yes!
The 'Meaning of Life the Universe and Everything' according to the 'Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy' (h2g2) is '42' as worked out by the computer 'Deep Thought', which by a strange coincidence is the number of the next Puppy version /10 . . .

The computer 'Deep Thought' proposed the building of a new computer to work out the real nature of the question, that '42' was the answer to. This computer was known as 'Earth'

Loved "Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (read the original 1970's-something book back then,...and then saw the movie when it came out.........)
As a still fairly "newbie" to linux in general,....(and a stanch lover of Puppy)...hope it will be just as friendly as easy as always! It was Puppy 3.01 that originally won me over from "that other main-stream OS"...... (using Puppy4 now,...can't wait for any other new pups coming down the pike).

I have to take issue with the first release being a big thing idea. I think it should be the opposite. Like Lobster, I think we should start with baby steps. Particularly since Puppy has gone through such big changes already, from 3->4 and 4->4.1. The first thing we do (as far as development goes) needs to be fixing as many dumb little things as we can. That will give us a chance to get used to the new community approach, that will probably still be getting worked out as we start working.

After 4.1 has had a chance to settle in and get cleaned up and polished, then we can start thinking about whether we should continue down the 4.1 line, switch back to 3.xx, or start a new 5.xx. But not until we've settled into the new system.

If we start trying to make big decisions like that right away, we will get nowhere fast. That I guarantee. Big decisions won't be an option until we have the community system running smoothly and everybody understands how it works and more or less agrees to be bound by it. Otherwise we'll just have a bunch of "who died and made you king" arguments.

But if we stick to small stuff at first, we can identify any problems with our structure and fix them before we start putting too much strain on it.

As for who is "in charge", I think it should be thought of as a coordinator, who since he isn't focused on working on individual projects like the devs, can see the bigger picture better and direct things appropriately. I don't think it should be a "dictator" style thing. More like just another position within the council. The council would be what makes the decisions (with the help of the community at large), and the coordinator would be the one who makes delegations in the form of strong recommendations, updates to the to-do list, etc.

I also think that we should strongly avoid telling people what to do, as that would make it like work. I for one refuse to work without being paid, even on Puppy. So I think what would be better is having a pool of tasks that need to be done. A to-do list. Put a loose priority next to the items too. The devs would take items off that and work on them. If an especially important thing comes up, the coordinator would see who's doing what and ask the people doing the "fluffiest" stuff to work on the important thing. Or if we just don't seem to be making progress, the coordinator could try to coordinate us better.

This way there is a lot of freedom to do what we want, but we can still be "herded" in a general direction. It also makes things easier for people like me who can't commit to any kind of a timeline. I'm in college, therefor my life is dictated by what the professors feel like assigning. Sometimes I have an easy week with lots of free time. Other times I might have no time for half a month. I don't have much warning when things like that will happen. In a framework where somebody had to assign me tasks, it just wouldn't be efficient. But with a task pool, I could come by and work on things as I have time, and not work when I don't. Things are more relaxed for the developers, and the coordinator doesn't have to do all the work of figuring out who should work on what. He can observe who works on what to get an idea of what everybody's skills and preferences are, and then when a situation arises where somebody request help working on something, or an important bug needs fixing NOW, he'll have a good idea of who to ask._________________Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forumYou cannot attach files in this forumYou can download files in this forum